A blog to share security, networking and cloud related technology information as @vCloudernBeer picked up on his search for his destiny in the cloud. (LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chowanthony)

Thursday, February 12, 2015

My journey to the cloud - Achieved one major milestone

I am
happy, excited and honored to be selected as a VMware vExpert for the year 2015.

This is a major milestone and confirmation on my path to the cloud.

The vExpert Program

The
title vExpert is a little bit misleading because, it is not a certification
that validates a person’s technical expertise but on how much a person
contributes to the VMware community.This
blog
has a good description on the VMware vExpert program. Basically vExpert has 3 tracks:

Customer

Partner

Evangelist

I applied for the evangelist track.

My journey to the cloud

In
2008, the word “virtualization” is only a buzz word for me.In May 2008, I saw an Email from Interop
saying the first 100 person that reply to that Email will get a free conference
pass to Interop.Working on a networking
company, I had attended Interop many times but only for the expo when I roam
around the different vendor booth lurking for free t-shirts.To my surprise I did get a conference pass. The
company that I work for is not doing too well and they will not pay for my travel
and lounging expenses.Well I figure for
less than $500, I can attend Interop with a full conference pass is a really good
deal.So I paid for the expenses from my own pocket and went.

This conference turns out to be my life changing event.I
picked the virtualization track and in 5 days, I learned a lot about
virtualization. I saw that virtualization would be the future.

After
Interop I started to make myself read different articles, blogs and whitepapers
that I came across every day. I build for myself a home lab to play around with different technologies.With this I became
a generalist.I can talk about security,
DevOps, Configuration Management Tools, virtualization, networking, SDN/NFV,
container … etc and also my other favorite subject – beer. But then what can I do with all these things that I learn everyday? I need to translate what I know into something that can help my employer to make money. What can I offer? What kind of problem can I solve for my boss?

In the
technology world, one should go very broad or go very deep.I find that going broad is not an easy
route to walk.

If you
look at the title and description of this blog, you will see that I am trying
to find a job in the cloud technology that I can land myself in so that
my day job will be cloud related. Again, being a generalist, what can I do? What can I offer to my employer? I like
being a Technology Evangelist or Technical Marketing Engineer.I would also like to be a solution architect but
I will need way more real life/ production level design experience.

I find
that I have a passion on technology as well as a passion to pass along what I have
learned everyday to others so that we can all move forward in the IT industry.

Looking ahead in 2015

Well,
I know this is already February (42 days already passed by in 2015) but this is my plan
for 2015 being a VMware vExpert.I am
going to serve the community by sharing what I learn in this blog and I will be
looking for speaking opportunities in difference conferences and/or local user group. At local meetups I often encourage others to participate more and to share what they know. I made a slogan: I know some and you know some. Let's share what we know.

I am also active
on Twitter (my handle is @vCloudernBeer) and I will be twitting and re-twitting different technology related
topics.